I am way, WAY behind in posting deserving Comments of the Day, and I apologize to all, both the authors of these excellent posts and EA readers who have not had the opportunity to read them. I’m going to try to post them in chronological order, oldest first, but don’t hold me to that: I have a sinking feeling that this COTD by Sarah B. came after one or more that I intended to post last week. Her comment (I hope I’m not misgendering her!) is actually one of many superb ones on this Ethics Quiz, including those by Michael R, Curmie, and Chris Marschner, among others. I highly recommend reading the entire exchange.
Now here is Sarah B.’s Comment of the Day on the post, “Ethics Quiz: The Consequences For Endorsing Terrorism”:
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Actions have consequences. Speech has consequences. We can talk all we like about the Freedom of Speech (or Religion or Right to Assemble, etc), but while the government cannot punish us for our speech, our fellow citizens can and will make judgements about us despite that.
There needs to be some determination of how to decide what to do with adults who proclaim stupid things in an institute of learning while respecting the value of free speech. I propose that for professors, lecturers, administrators, and those in positions of power,they required to give a two hour session on their position, open to all. The first 45 or so minutes would be reserved for what they have to say, with the remaining time being devoted to questions A moderator (or perhaps two of opposing positions) should be present to step in when the speaker does not answer a question. Ex. “Why do you believe that is is fair to intentionally target and behead young children and the elderly non-combatants?” “Well, Israel doesn’t belong there so it doesn’t matter.” Moderators can point out that this is not an answer and require a real answer to the tough questions before continuing. On the other hand, “Does this mean you deny the Moon Landing?” would be thrown out by the moderator as completely stupid. Of course, anyone, teacher or student, who tries the heckler’s veto or shouts down another person should be immediately escorted out. Professors who support the heckler’s veto should be immediately terminated.
If, at the end of this session, hardly difficult for scholars who purportedly have the job of educating others, they acquit themselves with some degree of valor, they get to keep their status. If not, depending on what their status is, they can be punished for revealing their lack of fitness to teach. Administrators would be most easily disposed of and likely terminated, followed by faculty in positions that SHOULD be able to figure this stuff out.
For example, I would hope History or Ethics professors could acquit themselves well, but a Math professor might have more difficulty and be given some slack. If a Middle East History professor says that they didn’t know that Hamas has declared that only the eradication of the Israeli state is acceptable in any compromise, then out they should go.
However, university faculty and administrators who perform poorly, but not enough so to lose their job, should have to take an ethics and/or maybe a history class so that they are reminded that to present what they claim to be informed opinions, they need to actually be informed.
As for students, I think that in our cancel culture today, a company can very easily justify saying that they won’t hire students from certain schools for certain years as they apparently had a very bad education, which may protect those companies from having certain bad educations on staff.
However, it is also fair to require students to take History and Ethics classes. This could be a request from companies, or a step forward for universities to start to justifying their existence and tuition. If your students are proclaiming terrorism is good, requiring them to learn what they are missing is a step towards proving that you will not maintain a facility for brainwashing.
I personally prefer three credit hour classes requiring strict attendance at 8 AM, requiring 40 page papers weekly, with a D denying you progress toward adegree. Certain degrees could up that requirement to a B or A, like both semesters of O-Chem must be passed with an A if you want to go to the Pharmacy College. In plenty of majors, a class with those requirements is common, so let’s add another on. What is 139 credits compared to 133?
Sleep is overrated in college anyway.
Finally, I dislike the idea of saying that just because you were a young adult when you did something stupid means that consequences should be light. I know people who did something stupid in their early twenties who cannot get jobs or travel, more than two decades later, because of something that is a felony in one state and a slap on the wrist a few miles further north. I feel very sorry for people who do stupid stuff in their twenties, but at what point do we decide that people are adults? My great grandmother was expected to be an adult when she was married at 13 and started having children 13 months later, and that was the case over many centuries. Now at twice that age, people are still saying that being an adult is too hard and we should forgive them for the mistakes they make at young ages.
I’m not opposed to compassion, but lessons are almost always learned better when the consequences are strict. I do believe that many things in our society have turned a little too harsh, but many others have turned too lenient. This is a case where we need to up the severity, but not go overboard.
Ethics Alarms 
Thank you Jack.
By the way, if you have misgendered me here, my husband is in for quite the surprise, better than a decade and four children later.
There are several commenters here who deliberately avoid gender identifiers and who use misleading or ambiguous screen names. I wrote that tongue in cheek after reading about HHS requiring its staff to use “preferred pronouns.”
Well done Sarah.
I would agree with much of this, and I would go a step farther to say that before people are granted any kind of license by the state, they need to demonstrate not just the necessary skill, but the necessary wisdom to be allowed to use that skill. I think journalism should be a licensed profession we’re not just any Tom, Dick, or Harriet can come out of the so-called college of journalism and start influencing public opinion.
Then again, I also would be okay with requiring would be first time parents to demonstrate a level of knowledge and skill before they are allowed to have a child. Too many problems in society start with parents who have no business being parents having children. Of course, I’d also be okay with requiring a certain level of education and knowledge before being allowed to vote, and I would be okay with denying the vote to individuals who are on public assistance.
I know some of this sounds harsh, but, as Ms Sarah has pointed out, society has become way too lenient about a lot of things. It disgusts me that two lawyers who participated in the 2020 riots in New York and threw Molotov cocktails got minimal prison time, although I think they’re done as lawyers. It disgusts me that Samantha Shader, apparently a professional protestor with a long rap sheet only got 6 years when she should have drawn a much longer sentence. I’d also be all for denying the franchise to convicted felons. Democrats, however, love the idea of extending the franchise as far as they possibly can, because low information voters who are somehow beholden to the democratic party are good for keeping them in office. Ignorance is strength, right?
I think companies should look deeper into activist behavior on the part of prospective new hires. There are plenty of people who come out of college with high marks, but low wisdom, low emotional maturity, and a whole lot of passion that they have no idea what to do with. A big part of where we went wrong was the idea that somehow young people have some kind of unique perspective that the rest of the world should listen to. Call me crazy, but I think the perspective of those who have experience and proven themselves successful is a little bit more valuable than the perspective of someone who swings a placard by day and gets drunk or drugged up and has as much sex as they can by night. I think companies are well within their rights to deny employment to people who have embraced ideas that are just plain stupid or wrong.
I know, a lot of this sounds like we’re swinging the bell back from the days of 3 years ago where you had to say black lives matter or everything could be denied you, but so what? If you push the clapper of the bell too far one way and it swings back the other side awfully hard, don’t complain when the bell peals and deafens you. A lot of people thought that three years ago was a changing and redefining moment for this country, but they never had a plan for what it would be changed and redefined to.
It never seemed to occur to these people that defunding the police would make places less safe or that tearing things apart and burning things would create an economic disruption for that disruption in an economy that was just coming back from a horrible pandemic was probably not a good idea. I think if we say it did not occur to them, however, we are extending them too much grace. The people who pushed all of these idiotic policies were full grown and educated people, they should have known better. Either they did not know better, in which case they should have sat down and shut up, or they knew better and decided to go ahead with it anyway, whether from cynical self-interest or from misguided passion is irrelevant. It took this country 11 years to come back from the national bender that was the late 60s, I hope it doesn’t take us that long to come back from this.
(1) I don’t think you really want journalists to be licensed. Who do you think is going to do the licensing? It will be today’s so-called journalists. There would be no way for anyone outside the establishment to do journalism. Do you want today’s journalism professors to have a monopoly on the news?
(2) If you want to reform college, do away with state funding and government student loans. Students are being radicalized by parts of academia that exists only to radicalize students. These areas have no benefit to society or the economy. So, why do they exist? They exist because we send people to college and tell them to ‘explore themselves’ while they are being supported with taxpayer money and student loans. Without that support, they or their parents would be a little more focused on studying something that could be used to earn a living. I once worked out that my state funds the state colleges to the extent that a college could pay for the faculty, minimal administration, room, board, and books with a little left over. The state colleges are now spending that plust $15,000. Where is the money going? To useless and dangerous stuff and sports (or was that redundant?).
(3) If you really want a deep dive into why students study these things, you have to go back to affirmative action. Let’s say you want to admit more minorities to your college. The easiest way is to lower admission standards to them alone. Then comes the problem that your new minority students have an average ACT score of 20 and the rest of the class has an average of 30. If the courses are graded on a curve, the new minority students will be destroyed. So, the only way to keep the minority students is to come up with segregated majors, so the curve will work for them. These new majors can’t be very challenging. It also helps if the majors reinforce the idea that the world is out to get them, so when they take a class outside the major and do poorly, they can rationalize it. This works for underachieving women, too. This all falls neatly in with the Marxist tendencies of most major colleges, so it worked quite well. Now all this is well established, despite the fact that there are no jobs for people with these majors except as professional agitators, protesters, professors, etc. When the graduates can’t find jobs with their 2.5 GPA in oppression studies, their courses taught them that this is exactly what would happen due to racism and the patriarchy.
(4) Colleges never came back from the 60’s, they just pressed onwards. How do you think we got here?
In the WSJ, by a UC Berkeley law prof: “Don’t Hire My Anti-Semitic Law Students”
https://www.wsj.com/articles/dont-hire-my-anti-semitic-law-students-protests-colleges-universities-jews-palestine-6ad86ad5?st=ryp5di2x3q0on87&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
It seems reasonable until I get to the part about ‘everyone should have a homeland’. What? So, what homeland am I supposed to have? Who says everyone should have a homeland? This sounds as out-of-touch as the article I read this morning about ‘starter cars’ for lower income people and they all were 100,000+ mile cars that cost over $15,000.
Well done. I might add that adolescence is a social construct. As pointed out by Sarah, in the past passage into adulthood was marked by the completion of puberty. It was from then on that you were expected to assume adult responsibilities and obligations. Sarah’s grandmother is such an example. There are many, many more. Last night I watched the opening episode of “The Pacific.” One scene depicted the Marine squad singing Happy Birthday to one of their “brothers” who had celebrated his 18th birthday in the jungles of Guadalcanal. I celebrated my 19th in the jungle of Vietnam.
Today, we expand ‘adolescence” by adding the category of “young adult” which extends to the third decade of life when we still excuse irresponsibility and irrationality,
No employer in its right mind would or should hire an employee with this type of bigoted attitude. At the very least, it’s a Title VII violation waiting to happen. Imagine having this conduct dredged up in a religious discrimination claim.
Then again, imagine a religious discrimination claim by these people, claiming that supporting terrorism is intrinsic to their religion.
Ha. I love it. See the comment by the CEO here who says not hiring people who support murderous conduct is the easiest decision he has to make as a CEO. https://www.nbcnews.com/business/corporations/harvard-letter-israel-columbia-ivy-davis-polk-law-firm-student-rcna120881
Here was a comment I left on another blog.
https://reason.com/2023/10/16/vivek-ramaswamy-cancel-culture-harvard-israel-hamas/?comments=true#comment-10278092